3,652
by Nihil5upernum
Summary: A girl wakes up with the sun in her face. A short one-off, inspired by a rather infamous AskReddit comment. EDIT: The girl in the story is Tōng Líng Tǎ, also known as Ziggurat. She's mentioned a couple times in Worm. The AskReddit comment in question is at reddit dot com /r/AskReddit/comments/1rgpdf/what is the laziest thing youve ever done/cdnafqe/


The girl woke.

She woke, as she did every day for the past ten years, to the blinding light of the sun as it crept up over the mountains to the East, shining in through her wall-to-wall window to warm her face. Harsh light; not the warm orange light of a fire or the assortment of hues that accompanied the sunset, but a white, hard light. Even through heavy eyelids, a spot began to appear at the center of her vision.

The sounds of the world bled into her awareness - ducks and goats, the white noise of the local insects, the occasional revving of an engine as the compound began its day around her.

But today wasn't just any day.

The girl pressed her eyes shut harder, as if the exertion could possibly help with that penetrating light. She tugged on her blanket, a meager, roughspun thing, but it didn't quite reach her eyes, having been tucked in tight at the foot of her bed.

She'd counted. They hadn't wanted her to, but she had - at first with a pen and paper, then in her head when they took those things away. Three thousand six hundred and fifty two days, she had slept in this room. That was including the leap years, she'd remembered to do that about a month ago when she realized she was coming up on ten years.

Three thousand six hundred and fifty two days, she had woken up to this awful sun. Three thousand six hundred and fifty two days, she promptly dressed and reported to her handlers before a breakfast of oatmeal and protein mash. Three thousand six hundred and fifty two days, she started her morning with routine and institutionalized discomfort.

She'd tried sleeping on her other side, after the first few of mornings. But no matter how she went to sleep - on her other side, on her back, on her stomach, even with her head facing the foot of her bed - she always woke up facing the East, and her window, and the sun. She supposed it was an artifact of her anatomy, or a whim of her subconscious. She preferred to think that; the notion that someone might be adjusting her body while she slept was too awful to think about, especially since she wouldn't put it past this place.

Normally she was dressed in her uniform by now, but thinking about that number - three thousand six hundred and fifty two - had made her pause, and filled her with a roiling resentment that she hadn't felt in years. So she lay there, eyelids baking, and didn't move except to curl her toes in agitation. She felt...stuck. Whenever she tried to will herself to rise, that angry, resentful part of her refused to budge.

It occurred to her restless mind that she could just turn over now. Turn over, rest her eyes, pretend the sun wasn't there. She might even get a few more minutes of sleep before her body turned itself back toward the window or her handlers sent someone to fetch her. She considered it...

No.

No, she was not going to turn away. She was not going to concede defeat to that harsh light, that had worn her down day after day as much as anything else had. If she had taken one good thing, a single one, from this place, it was the knowledge that she had power.

She would not let this day go by unmarked.

The girl opened her eyes.

A distance away, nearly half a kilometer from the perimeter of the compound, the ground began to rumble. The blanket of grass over a wide patch of earth began to writhe, small puffs of dirt and dust shooting up as pockets of air beneath the ground were formed and annihilated. The rumbling grew louder, reached farther, and she began to hear alarmed yells from around the compound. There was a great crack as the first shear happened, and a small cliff appeared where only a flat meadow stood before. Other sounds followed - cracks and splinters and the sounds of millions of tons of stone moving against millions more. Trees were uprooted, boulders upheaved, birds flocked from the area in numbers so great they obscured the distant mountains.

The tower of earth grew higher and higher, shaking the compound and all the surrounding villages. Bystanders were caught between panicking, fleeing with their families to safety, and watching, spellbound as the spire rose further into the air - sixty meters, eighty meters, a hundred...

The tower's growth slowed, the rumbling beginning to die down, as it reached its full height.

Tall enough to obscure the sun, creeping over the mountains to the East.

The light was gone, the girl realized consciously. Angry spots cleared from her vision; her eyes relaxed, her face felt cool once more.

She closed her eyes. For the first time in three thousand six hundred and fifty three days, she was smiling.

The girl lay there in her bed for one minute and twelve seconds before the men with guns burst through her door, barking orders and threats. She didn't react immediately; ever so slowly, she sat up and stretched her arms, savoring the looks of confusion on the soldiers' faces. She looked at each of them in turn - a knowing look, a look of confidence that not a one of them would dare harm her.

Then, the girl sighed heavily, threw off her blanket, and swung her legs around to plant her feet on the floor.

Tōng Líng Tǎ got out of bed.


End file.
